Book Chapters

“Challenging Monumentality, Channeling Counter-Monumentality.” Conclusion. Reading Confederate Monuments. Ed. Maria Seger. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2022. 251–54.

“How and Why to Read Confederate Monuments.” Introduction. Reading Confederate Monuments. Ed. Maria Seger. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2022. 3–18.

“Redeeming White Women in/through Lost Cause Films.” Reading Confederate Monuments. Ed. Maria Seger. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2022. 142–65.

Book Reviews

Rev. of American Literature, Lynching, and the Spectator in the Crowd: Spectacular Violence, by Debbie Lelekis. Studies in American Naturalism 11.1 (2016): 102–04.

Monograph Projects

At All Costs: Extralegal Violence and Liberal Democracy in US Culture. Manuscript in preparation.

Killing Them Softly: Motherhood, Violence, and the State in the US Cultural Imaginary. Manuscript in preparation.

PRESENTATIONS

Conference Presentations

“The University as a Site of Constructing/Deploying Cajun and Creole Sameness/Difference.” American Studies Association, Montreal, Canada, November 2023.

“Confronting the Ghosts of Our Past, Present, and Future: Building Names and Race at Two Deep South Campuses.” American Historical Association, New Orleans, LA, January 2022 (canceled).

“Building Renaming on a University Campus: Motivations, Justifications, and Observations.” Louisiana Historical Association, Alexandria, LA, March 2021 (virtual).

“Redeeming White Women in/through Early Lost Cause Films.” Modern Language Association, Seattle, WA, January 2020.

“Extralegal Violence and Economies of Dispossession in the Nineteenth-Century United States.” Modern Language Association, Seattle, WA, January 2020.

“The Poetics of Economies of Dispossession.” American Studies Association, Honolulu, HI, November 2019 (co-organized and chaired).

“Maternal Filicide and the State in Women’s Progressive Era Short Fiction.” American Comparative Literature Association, Washington, DC, March 2019.

“Maternal Filicide and the State in the Interwar Cultural Imaginary.” American Studies Association, Atlanta, GA, November 2018 (co-organized).

“Redeeming White Women as Property in The Birth of a Nation.” American Literature Association, San Francisco, CA, May 2018.

“Tolerating and Coopting Dissent: Examining the State’s Role in (Anti-)Lynching.” American Studies Association, Chicago, IL, November 2017.

“Deferred Lynching and the Moral High Ground.” Futures of American Studies Institute, Hanover, NH, June 2017.

“Extralegal Violence and Liberal-Democratic Governance in Frank J. Webb’s The Garies and Their Friends.” American Literature Association, Boston, MA, May 2017.

“Convict Labor and the Moral Calculus of the Nineteenth-Century Carceral Economy.” Modern Language Association, Philadelphia, PA, January 2017.

“Theft and Self-Protection in the Wild West.” Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association, Pasadena, CA, November 2016.

“Being or Owning Property? Rethinking White Women’s Role in Multiethnic Lynching Narratives.” Nineteenth Century Studies Association, Lincoln, NE, April 2016.

“Preserving Capitalism in Crisis: Recalling Extralegal Violence in the Post-Reconstruction Era.” Northeast Modern Language Association, Hartford, CT, March 2016.

“Extralegal Rhetoric and the State of Exception in Charles W. Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition.” Northeast Modern Language Association, Harrisburg, PA, April 2014.

“‘No Trespassin’’: The Property-Based Logic of Racial Violence in Richard Wright’s Uncle Tom’s Children.” Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, Oklahoma City, OK, March 2014.

“Detecting Capital Criminals: The Case of Mistaken Identity in Lynching Narratives.” American Comparative Literature Association, New York, NY, March 2014.

“‘I’ve Been Seeing It Ever Since’: Grievability, Affective Frames, and Lynching as Spectacle in the Post-Reconstruction American Novel.” American Literature Association, Boston, MA, May 2013.

“The Ethics of Child Murder: Maternal Filicide and American Exceptionalism in Women’s Progressive Era Short Fiction.” Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, Pittsburgh, PA, March 2013.

“Reading the Two Maps of ‘The Known World’ in Edward P. Jones.” Northeast Modern Language Association, Rochester, NY, March 2012.

“Abandoning the ‘Maternal Instinct’: A Study of Four Canonical Feminist Texts.” College English Association, San Antonio, TX, March 2010.

Invited Presentations

“Reading Confederate Monuments in and beyond Lafayette.” Global Souths Conference, Lafayette, LA, March 2023.

“Reframing Your Work for Different Audiences and Modes.” Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Writing and Research Training Program, Los Angeles, CA, July 2021 (virtual).

“Reimagining Graduate Education after COVID.” Northeast Modern Language Association Convention, Philadelphia, PA, March 2021 (virtual).

“Extralegal Violence and Liberal Democracy in US Culture.” University of Notre Dame Law School, Notre Dame, IN, November 2020 (virtual).

“Extralegal Violence and Economies of Dispossession in Antebellum Philadelphia.” Global Souths Conference, Lafayette, LA, March 2020 (canceled).

“Roundtable on AP and Higher Education.” A Dream Deferred: The Future of African American Education Conference, Chicago, IL, March 2020 (canceled).

“Program Innovation/Pedagogical Innovation.” Association of Departments of English–Association of Departments of Foreign Languages Summer Seminar, Atlanta, GA, June 2018.

“Race, Resources, and Real Estate.” Modern Language Association Convention, New York, NY, January 2018 (respondent).

“Lessons of the Connected Academics Proseminar on Careers.” Modern Language Association Convention, New York, NY, January 2018.

COURSES

English 205: American Literature to 1865
English 206: American Literature since 1865
English 210: Literary Genres
English 211: Thematic Approaches to Literature
English 212: Literature and Other Media
English 320: Modern Fiction
English 371: Introduction to Ethnic Literatures
English 430G: Southern Literature
English 433G: Approaches to Black Literature and Culture
English 435G: American Literature, 1865 to 1914
English 490: Senior Seminar
English 496G: Major Literary Figures
English 550: Studies in Nineteenth-Century American Literature
English 596: Research Methods
Honors 285: Topics in the Humanities
Honors 385: Topics in the Humanities
Honors 485: Modern Problems in the Humanities
Humanities 200: Ideas and Issues
Humanities 300: Themes in the Humanities
Humanities 400G: Humanities Colloquium

SERVICE

University Leadership

Co-Chair, Equity Caucus, 2020–22

University Committees

Advising Council, 2023–
Task Force on Building Names, 2020–22

Co-Organizer, Critical Black Studies Working Group and Speaker Series, 2021–22

College Committees

Humanities Program Committee, 2022–
Gender and Sexuality Studies Minor Committee, 2020–
Ernest J. Gaines Center Books from the Bayou Committee, 2018–
Black and African Diaspora Studies Minor Committee, 2017–

Department Leadership 

Coordinator, Undergraduate Studies, 2023–
Chair, Undergraduate Course Offerings Committee, 2023–
Chair, Undergraduate Curriculum Committee, 2023–
Chair, English Majors Committee, 2023–
Co-Chair, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Decolonization (EDID) Committee, 2019–21

Department Committees

Graduate Curriculum Committee, 2023–
Undergraduate Literature Concentration Committee, 2022–
PhD Exam Committee, 2022–
Black Literature and Culture Search Committee, 2022–23
Personnel Committee, 2022–23
English Majors Committee, 2022–23
Graduate Advising Committee, 2021­–22
Ad Hoc Committee on Graduate Program Mission, 2020–21
Black Literature and Culture Search Committee, 2020
Gender and Sexuality Studies Committee, 2019–
Ad Hoc Committee on Admissions Workload and Diversity, 2019­
American Literature Search Committee, 2019
Master of Arts Committee, 2018–
Graduate Recruitment Committee, 2018–22
Undergraduate Curriculum Committee, 2017–23
Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Decolonization (EDID) Committee, 2017–21
Graduate Placement Committee, 2017–20
Symposium Committee, Department of English, 2017­­–18

Graduate Exam Committees 

American Literature since 1945, 2021–22
Feminist Theory and Criticism, 2020–22
Southern Literary Studies, 2020–22
American Literature to 1865, 2018–22
American Literature 1865 to 1945, 2020–22
Africana Studies, 2019–22

Academic Advising

Undergraduate Advisor, Department of English, 2017–19, 2022–
Graduate Advisor, Department of English, 2019–22

Dissertation, Thesis, and Exam Advising

Faryal Atif, in progress, MA exam committee member.

Amélie Broussard, in progress, thesis committee member.

Morgan Christie, in progress, PhD exam/dissertation committee member.

Kym Cunningham, “Materiality or Future Ghosts: How Black Maternal Fugitivity Speculates the Archive and We Myths Bite,” 2022, dissertation committee member.

Delicia Daniels, “Lucy Terry-Prince: A Case for Neglected Civil and Criminal Law Origins in Black Literature and Abolition Chronicles,” 2023, dissertation committee member.

Khirsten Doolan, “The Blood of the Covenant: A Queer Southern Literary Genealogy,” 2021, dissertation committee member.

J Catt Evans, “Survivance and Healing the Soul Wound through Indigenous Poetry and I Wrote What I Couldn’t Say,” 2022, dissertation committee member.

Francisco J. Farrera, “The Celebration of Cultural Diversity: An Architectural Proposal Inspired in Music,” 2019, thesis committee member (architecture).

BJ Flowers, in progress, PhD exam/dissertation committee member.

Wandeka Gayle, “Desire, Displacement, Disillusionment: The Afro Caribbean Immigrant Experience in America and Motherland and Other Stories,” 2018, dissertation committee member.

Hailey Hanks, in progress, PhD exam/dissertation committee member.

Brandi Hanna, in progress, PhD exam/dissertation committee member.

Jaleesa Harris, “The Black Gothic: A Framework to Extend Black Studies through Property and Reparations,” 2023, dissertation committee chair.

Steven Jaindl, 2020, MA exam committee chair.

Wes Jamison, 2020, PhD exam committee member.

Melanie Johnson, in progress, dissertation committee chair.

Queen Kanu, in progress, dissertation committee chair.

Patrick Lewis, “Ambivalence à la Carte: Masculinity in the Contemporary Ethnic American Bildungsroman,” 2020, dissertation committee member.

Jude Marr, “Bird on Barbed Wire and Translation as Loss: Liminality, Symbiosis, and the Afro-Creole Poets of Civil War Era New Orleans,” 2019, dissertation committee member.

Jeanna Mason, “Navigating the Spaces: The Influences of Place and Space in Twentieth-Century Post-Plantation Novels,” 2021, dissertation committee member.

Jordan McClements, 2020, MA exam committee chair.

Jennifer Morrison, “Long Revision: Contemporary African American Fiction of the Gulf South,” 2020, dissertation committee chair.

Iesha Newton, “Behind the Scenes: A Study of Black Women as Filmmakers and Television Producers,” 2022, thesis committee member (communications).

Matthew M. Pincus, “Talented and Expendable: American Women Crime Writers of the 1940s and 50s,” 2019, dissertation committee member.

Jade Rouchon, 2020, MA exam committee member.

Raquel Thorne, in progress, dissertation committee chair.

Gina Warren, “Affective Representations of ‘Chicken(s)’ in American Literature in the 20th and 21st Centuries and The Chicken Underground: Adventures in Food Politics,” 2020, dissertation committee member.

Aleya Washington, “Sport H(a)unting Blackness in (Neo) Slave Narratives and Contemporary Works,” 2020, thesis committee chair.

Professional

Peer Reviewer, University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press, 2021–
Peer Reviewer, Studies in the Novel, 2019–
Founding Organizer, Graduate Employee Union–United Auto Workers Local 6950, 2014–15
Assistant Editor, MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, 2012–14

PUBLIC-FACING WORK

Writing

“Information Exchange: Thinking of Networking as Learning.” Connected Academics. Modern Language Association, 21 Dec. 2015.

With Todd Vachon and Gayatri Phadke. “In First Contract, UConn Grad Assistants Win Raises and Much More.” Labor Notes, 31 July 2015.

“Six-Month Anniversary of the Formation of the Graduate Employee Union–UAW at UConn.” Op-ed. Connecticut AFL–CIO, 17 Oct. 2014.

Invited Presentations

“A Roundtable on Reading Confederate Monuments.” Ernest J. Gaines Center, Lafayette, LA, November 2022.

“Lynching and Policing in Lafayette, Louisiana.” University of Louisiana at Lafayette College of Liberal Arts Public Symposium on Racial Justice, Lafayette, LA, September 2020 (virtual).

“Dismantling Structural Racism.” Perspectives 360: Reimagining Civil Society, Lafayette, LA, March 2018.

“The Jim Crow Monuments Controversy.” University of Louisiana at Lafayette Constitution Day, Lafayette, LA, September 2017.

Media Appearances

Bayou to Beltway, KRVS 88.7 FM Radio Acadie, May 2021.
Bayou to Beltway, KRVS 88.7 FM Radio Acadie, March 2021.
“The Bones of Texas History,” TwoStonians Podcast, May 2019.

Service

Equal Justice Initiative Coalition, Lafayette Parish, 2018–

AWARDS

Founders’ Award for Humanities Teaching and Research, Friends of the Humanities, 2020
Achievement Medal for Civilian Service, Department of the Army, 2017
Predoctoral Fellowship, University of Connecticut College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, 2016
Connected Academics Proseminar Fellowship, Modern Language Association, 2015­–16
Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, University of Connecticut Graduate School, 2015
Predoctoral Fellowship, University of Connecticut College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, 2015
Aetna Graduate Critical Essay Second Prize, University of Connecticut, 2014
Travel Grant, American Comparative Literature Association, 2014
Aetna Graduate Critical Essay First Prize, University of Connecticut, 2012
Graduate Student Travel Award, Northeast Modern Language Association, 2012
Travel Grant, New-York Historical Society Institute for Constitutional History, 2011

PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS

Modern Language Association
American Studies Association
Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists
Critical Ethnic Studies Association
Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States
American Comparative Literature Association